


liquor

by merriell



Series: kiss with a fist [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Suicide Attempt, abuse cw, alcoholism cw, implied rape cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 19:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: Richard's first taste liquor was age at seven. It tasted like the slam of the back door of his kitchen. It tasted like his mother bleeding on the floor. It tasted like his father's fist.





	liquor

**Author's Note:**

> an old fic that used to be here until i removed it.

He first knew alcohol at age seven, one a.m in the morning, somewhere on July before it all went to shit. He opened his eyes when he heard someone yelling from somewhere inside the house. The yell consisted on two words—two words which if he ever said it in front of his parents, will earn him a mouth full of soap. He rubbed his eyes and got off the bed, tiptoed silently across his room. He opened the door slowly, because it always creaked and he didn’t want his father to get angry because he wasn’t in bed.

He first took a sip of a liquor at age seven, the slam of the backdoor so loud it made him flinch when he walked into the kitchen, the sight of his mother crying on the floor, bleeding. He breathed in the taste of vodka from the scars in his mother’s body as he rushed closer, shaking her from unconsciousness, trying to keep her awake from the drought that lull her into sleep.

“Call an ambulance,” a voice behind him said. He turned around to see his sister, face stoic, like she was used to the view; her blonde locks falling to her shoulder. She was the only one whose hair wasn’t crimson, the girl. “Call a freaking ambulance, brother.”

So he did, hands trembling with fear and something alike of selfishness. Because as much as he thought, as he feared for his mother and the fact that she was bleeding on the kitchen floor and maybe dying for all he knew, slowly; he was more scared for himself, about a sliver of happiness he thought he had on his hands that he wasn’t ready to let go of.

His first knowledge of alcohol was from his father’s body, when he threw the vodka bottle at his mother’s head, the first sip of bitterness mixed with blood.

 

*

 

A year later, Adam was born.

For months, his family was happy, or at least something that was the closest thing for happiness for a long while, until one night a mistake was made. He never knew what it was, but it was harmless; maybe Adam was crying too loud, maybe Daria was frowning too hard all dinner, maybe he cracked a joke that was out of line, but his mother failed on undoing the knots of anger in his father’s hand and the monster he saw on the kitchen appeared slightly on his father’s eyes, seeing through him, laughing at the fear that ran inside him.

He lied awake on his bed, waiting. He listened closely at the hushed voices, muted arguments that ran through the paper-thin walls, until his father started yelling and his mother screamed in fear. It went for minutes until it became louder, and his eyes shot open once he heard a loud sound of something crashing. He ran from his bed as fast as his little legs could, to see with his gray eyes the man who was his father but wasn’t his father looming over his mother like a feral animal.

The first thing that came out of his mind was to reach for the liquor on the table, abandoned, mind clouded with fear. Because the person who was closer to a monster who was wearing his father’s face was ripping his mother’s clothes to ribbons, while she cried and begged,  _Ilyashka, please stop... Rishulitchka, please, please_. But everyone who was awake on that house knew he wasn’t going to stop. So the boy who was eight but was older than that gripped the bottle tightly and swung it to the monster’s back.

For a long time, time stopped. His mother stopped making a sound and the monster above her stopped moving his hands. The boy stopped breathing and felt the blood; rushing in his ear and trickling down his hand, where the shards had slipped into his ivory skin. Then the monster stood and turned to him, and the boy felt his heart stop.

The monster loomed over him while his mother begged, but its ears were deaf and its heart was black as coal. Fear was running through the boy’s veins as he stepped backwards, wanting to run, but his little legs would not provide him the luxury of running away from the monster who once was his father. _Ilyashka, please, please... let him go to bed, he’s your son, he’s your son_ , his mother begged, but anyone awake on the house knew that all the words in the world would not stop the monster’s wrath from raining down on the boy.

So the boy kept his mouth shut tightly, until the first punch was swung and he was beaten like a dog. When he hissed between his teeth the words that would never reach his father, the monster left him bruises that would not go away for months later, like the words he kept and failed from slipping out of his mouth, Papa, I’m your son, I’m your son—and as consciousness slipped from his hand, he remembered that once upon a time his mother patted his head and said,  _you were the only reason he didn’t left me, you’ve saved us, Rishulitchka._

And he thought,  _no. I killed you._

That was the first time his father had beaten him bloody, but it was far from the last.

 

*

 

His mother died seven years after his father started hitting him. She died on her bed, hand reaching for his face; but she was too sleepy to touch him. He wanted to say sorry for ruining her life, for killing her because he existed, for keeping them together, and her eyes said sorry for not being able to protect him. But she did, a lot, when she locked his bedroom’s door and kept the key above the fridge, so his father wouldn’t paint bruises all over his body, so he beat and fuck her bloody but kept away from the boy. He didn’t say it, though; he kept the secret deep on his chest, beside his heart, where no one would find it. His brother was crying so hard his whole face was red like his hair, but his sister wasn’t crying. She was grasping the bedsheets, face stoic like she knew that this was something inevitable since long.

 

He didn’t know where his father as. He was angry that his father wasn’t here. He was angry that he couldn’t keep his mother breathing for one more minute, one more second. But somehow he was relieved as well.

When his mother closed her eyes and drifted into a sleep she would never wake up from, the boy who wasn’t a boy picked up one of his father’s vodka bottles and threw it to the tall, where liquor dripped down like blood splattering on the wall. He locked himself up in the bathroom and sat on the bathtub for long, hugging his legs and crying, crying loudly, for his mother and for him, for his siblings and for the person who used to be his father, until his sister knocked at the door and told him that grandmother had came with a car and they’ve taken mother away.

He stood up and walked out, slowly, but stopped cold when he saw empty pills bottle that was abandoned on the floor. He picked it up and held it tight against his heart, kept it between all his secrets and walked away. They took a bus to the hospital, he and Daria, hand holding each other’s tightly like they would find comfort in their cold hands. They didn’t cry when their grandmother told them that their mother had died of heart attack, but he knew the reason his mother died was the empty pill bottles in the bathroom.

They came home to find his father drinking. He picked up the phone when it rung, drank even more after that. He didn’t look at his wife’s bed. He didn’t look at the stain on the wall. He left after finishing his bottle.

The boy picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka and drank it while sitting at his father’s throne, the torn-up sofa they bought once upon a time at a second-hand store, closing his eyes and wincing at the bitterness. At his third swig, his sister showed up on the doorway, staring. “I’m going to kill that monster,” he said to her. And she stared at him with the expression she always wore and said, “Let’s drown him in water like he drown himself in vodka.” She took his fourth swig as a yes.

 

*

 

(He was too drunk to know. He was too drunk he fell into the cold pond. No one was there to save him, it was 3 am in the morning. Like there was no one there to call the ambulance when his mother drowns herself in pain killers. No one was there to save her.

The boy who wasn’t a boy walked away from the pond and saw a curtain opened. It was an old woman. His hometown was a small town where everyone knew everyone. The old woman must know who he was and who his family was, who his father was, the infamous drunkard who picks fight and beat his wife and kids. She had seen him pushing his father to the frozen pond and walked away. She had seen him. An ice ran through his heart.

But she nodded softly and closed the curtains. No police cars came to his house the next day, or the next day after.)

 

*

 

In high school, he knew a senior two years his age. They fucked in the closet, talked in empty parking lots and corners of minimarkets and his own messy room, anywhere no one could see them. They smoked on the school, laughing and discussing teachers who never know better, playing cards over beers and not kissing. They were happy until his senior left him for a girl with big breasts and thin lips. When he saw them kissing on the place where he and the senior used to smoke together, he grinned and looked away. He said nothing about the relationship he used to have with a senior two years his age, where the word relationship was never spoken.

He was smarter than any students in his school, yet he fucked up his exams intentionally, though he remembered all the words written on the books he read. His foster parents stared worriedly at his report card and he shrugged. He was the stupid jester who everyone thought was annoying and funny, and he never glanced when they whispered obvious insults at him, never get mad when they called him something. He laughed louder than the rest of them. He drank more than the rest of them. Drank and drank and drank, fucking strangers he met in the bars and pubs he could slip into.

 _I shouldn’t get attached to anyone anymore_ , he thought as he pulled someone he only knew for five minutes close.

He stopped drinking when one day Daria took a bus from where she lived and showed up at his door, with the expression she always wore. She stared at him like he was some pitiful thing, the girl with blonde locks and soft words, who hated Adam because he was useless. “Stop drinking,” she said to him, her tone undeniable to anyone. He put down the beer bottle he was holding and asked,

“How much Demerol do you need to drink before you die?”

 

*

 

He met Henry Winters under the shade of lighting at the crowded bar, taking swigs from Jack Daniels and laughing about old kings and history. The only thing why he took an attention was not only his weird Russian which always were coated by his stupid accent, but also because history was the last thing you expect to discuss at some noisy bar with a shitty bartender. They fucked a lot, after that, and he wrote his numbers at a Post-It beside the phone, and they met at fast food restaurants and dinners and pubs and cafés, him holding on too tight to a shattered piece of hope he lost in high school and repeating a mantra he started repeating before he went to military.

Henry Winters never drank as much as he did. He only smiled and watched, listened to him with his stupid smile, fucked him harsher than anyone else and took care of him gentler than anyone else.

He didn’t know when it started, but one day he started sleeping at his place and cooked him breakfast and laughed at his jokes, and it was the closest thing to warmth he had feel for a long while. Not long after it started, they started arguing, harmless argues about something he had said, or Henry’s nonexistant empathy; then it took turn for the worse. He threw the first punch, but Henry’s hurt more. Before they knew, it was a habit—harmless banters that took turn the worse that took turn for another violent sex.

When he hurt himself from broken shards of liquor bottle, Henry Winter pressed his wound so he could tell Henry why the fuck he did this. He didn’t answer but asked, “How much Demerol do you need to drink before you die?” Henry didn’t answer for a while before he said, “You don’t need to fucking drink the whole bottle if you drink alcohol with it, idiot.” Henry patched his wound up and scowled for the rest of the night.

When Henry fell asleep when they were watching Death Note, he paused the DVD and went to the bathroom. He opened the drawer and took out the pills bottle he always kept tightly against his heart, and stared at the label while sitting inside the bathtub.

 

*

 

One day, he found himself at a hospital. It was months after Henry found him drinking his life away at Chicago, searching for someone who killed Frida Schwartz, a week after his conversation with Sergei in the bar, months after Henry started saying that he couldn’t give less shit about whether he fucked anyone else or not. Henry was sitting on the corner, unlit cigarette in his lip and lighter flicking on and off in his hand. The flame was bluer than any flame he had ever seen.

“You shouldn’t smoke in hospital,” he said flatly.

Henry lifted his eyes and only frowned. They were silent for a while. He was still flicking his zippo on and off. The man who used to be the boy who had a mother who drowned herself with painkillers stared at the white of room’s wall and remembered the stain on his long-abandoned, old house.

“You fucking scared me,” Heinrich Patria said to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Henry sighed and flicked it off for the last time, stared at him and said, “You’re not drinking that much again. You’re not drinking this again. No. Not if it’s not in front of me.” In his other hand, where it didn’t hold a lighter, he held something straight out of Richard’s past.

“You haven’t called anyone about this, right?” Richard smiled when he nodded. “If you want me to stop, don’t fucking tell anyone about this.” Henry stood up from where he sat and gripped Richard’s wrist tightly. “You fucking idiot,” Henry said, and Richard ignored the redness in Henry’s green eyes.

They never talked about it again nor mention it to anyone.


End file.
